A major revolution in video display technology includes flat screens based on either liquid crystal display (LCD) or plasma display panel (PDP) technology that are rapidly replacing the cathode ray tube (CRT) technology that served as the primary display device for more than a half a century. A significant consequence of the new video display technologies is that pictures may now be displayed at higher picture-rates with progressive scanning on a flat screen. The new video display technologies may also facilitate a faster transition from standard definition television (SDTV) to high-definition television (HDTV). However, legacy video compression systems still use formats with lower picture-rates and may be unable to optimally display legacy video on modern display screens.
There may be restrictions on channel capacity that may affect the display of low picture-rate pictures. For example, considering a 30 Hz video sequence that may be broadcast over a mobile network, the terminals, for example, mobile phones may receive an encoded video sequence from a server. However, due to bandwidth limitations, only a low bit-rate video sequence may be communicated. As a result, the encoder may remove two out of every three pictures to be transmitted, resulting in a sequence with a picture rate of about 10 Hz, for example. The terminal may be capable of displaying video at 30 Hz but since it receives a 10 Hz video, it may have to perform some form of picture-rate conversion.
The picture rate up-conversion (PRUC) process may interpolate additional intermediate pictures between received pictures instead of repeating earlier received pictures. For motion-compensated PRUC, the interpolation process may be similar to the predicted pictures, for example, P-pictures and B-pictures in a video compression algorithm. However, in some cases, PRUC data comprising motion vector and residual data may not be transmitted. The display devices may perform PRUC utilizing their own motion estimation and motion compensation algorithms, which may not be able to handle a plurality of picture rates of received pictures.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.